Paper Chase

Paper is not just for typing on at the new Paper Shop on Park Avenue in Winter Park. There is marbleized and metalized gift wrapping, custom-designed stationery and party invitations, unusual greeting cards, brightly colored tissue paper, even confetti. There are also antique, leather and lucite desk accessories and a wide variety of picture frames. Owner Ellen Prague had a similar shop inside Hattie's boutique, but the expanded space in her own turquoise building allows her to add an art book store in the back.

A recent move forced Richard Adams and his family to pare away superfluous belongings. But the 31-year-old Maitland resident still is swimming in information. He has voluminous files of mortgage statements, bank statements, investment records, medical receipts, tax records and warranties. Adams even has his middle-school report cards and old English papers he penned as a student. At work, Adams, an operation manager at HomeBanc Mortgage Corp. in Orlando, wades through at least 100 e-mails a day. Then there are all the home-closing documents packed into his office.

QUESTION: Could you possibly tell me the name of an old TV sitcom staring John Houseman as a law school professor? J.S., Orlando.ANSWER: If that's an ``old'' show and I watched it devotedly, does that mean...? The Paper Chase was the 1978-79 CBS series (later aired in reruns by PBS and revived by Showtime) that starred Houseman as Professor Charles Kingsfield, a source of terror and awe for his contract law students. Houseman originated the role and won an Oscar for his efforts in the 1973 movie of the same name.

MYSTERY NIGHTMARE VISIONS Shutter Island, by Dennis Lehane (HarperTorch, $7.99, paperback): Lehane's tension-fraught second stand-alone after Mystic River is the stuff bad dreams are made of. Traversing the terrain of psychological suspense, he includes such familiar landmarks as an isolated island, a raging storm, a locked room and a federal institution for the criminally insane. Think The Twilight Zone, circa 1954. Things get dark very quickly for U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and his partner Chuck Aule as they disembark on the island to look for an escaped patient, a woman so delusional that she denies she ever drowned her children.

Orlando is making it easy for residents to get rid of those dangerously tilting stacks of newspapers in their living room corners.But what about all the living rooms in other communities, such as Winter Park and Altamonte Springs? Shouldn't they be relieved of their newspaper stacks too?Orlando deserves credit for helping to lead the paper chase by starting a voluntary newspaper recycling program. Another leader is Titusville, which has had a successful program for years.Recycling just makes sense.

STEPHANIE Brush deserves an award for her insightful Jan. 2 column about paper piles that sit in specific places around the house existing on air and dust bunnies, growing and even mingling and procreating into new little piles.It was about time that this covert homemaking activity was exposed. We could even have a contest for the largest pile, number of piles or most colorful pile. I have a candidate for oldest pile and one that has traveled the greatest distance to be here.I remember a whopper of a pile I had back in '85. Papers had been shuffling into the house at a high rate, through the mail, via consumer receipts, as escapees from my briefcase and even as notes folded in my shirt pocket.

This is the last season for The Paper Chase, which is televised on Showtime. The final five episodes, which began last Tuesday, are being telecast under the banner ''The Graduation Year.'' The two-hour finale will be broadcast in August. After that, Showtime will repeat the original 22 CBS shows and the 36 cable episodes. Eventually, the 58 Paper Chase stories will work their way into syndication. The Paper Chase, which stars John Houseman as the demanding and imperious Professor Charles W. Kingsfield, was first telecast on CBS for one season, 1978-79.

Rave-reviewing a pay-cable program always makes me uncomfortable. Movie critics regularly make recommendations on which people may base a spending decision, but most of the entertainment I write about is, if not quite ''free,'' paid for indirectly through the purchase of advertised products. Moreover, until pay-per-view cable comes along, it's impossible to endorse a specific cable program without tacitly endorsing the service presenting it -- a cable service that will cost a viewer about $10 a month on top of a basic cable subscription fee.However . . . if you thought The Paper Chase was truly special during its one acclaimed season (1978-79)

I wallow in paper. When the mail comes, it's a plethora of paper, most of which I don't need or want.At the office, I get originals and duplicates of everything and then Jane makes copies of the copies. Jane and I work together, and she is better organized than I am, but she's obsessed with making copies. One year when I got my eight tickets for the Giants' home football games, she made photocopies of my tickets so she would have a record of them.America has gone mad with paper since the invention of photocopy machines, and now the computer printers are spewing forth more printouts of everything than anyone possibly could have a use for.Making duplicate copies or computer printouts of things no one wanted even one of in the first place is giving Americans a new sense of purpose.

Bridges, an Oscar-nominated writer and director whose films include The Paper Chase, The China Syndrome and Urban Cowboy, died of intestinal cancer Sunday. He was 57. Bridges broke into movies in 1970 by writing and directing The Baby Maker. He also wrote and directed The Paper Chase in 1973 and 1979's The China Syndrome, which garnered Bridges an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay. He co-wrote the 1980 hit Urban Cowboy.

HER OWN WORDS Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, collected and edited by Carla Kaplan (Anchor Books, $19.95, paperback): Hurston, the famous Eatonville writer and folklorist (1891-1960), liked keeping in touch with family, friends and benefactors, often typing two or three long letters a day. Good thing she didn't have e-mail, or we wouldn't have this epic collection of 600 letters spanning 40 years. Jaunty postcards Hurston dashed off to fellow Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes in the 1920s; detailed letters to the Guggenheim Foundation about her research in Haiti in the 1930s; a sad plea to writer Fannie Hurst in 1949 for help with lawyers' fees in the wake of a scandal that rocked her reputation.

When Marlene L. Schiro went out on her first reporting assignment, she discovered that she'd rather help others than dig up stories and chase Pulitzers. Every time she went out to report a story, she says, "I'd wind up solving someone else's problems. "So I thought, `Gosh, maybe I could do this for a living.' " Right after high school, the Apopka resident, who was born and raised in Niagara Falls, N.Y., enrolled in St. Bonaventure University, a 600-acre campus tucked amid the Allegheny Mountains, to study journalism.

Holiday gift wrap has shot way beyond the drugstore cellophane-wrapped rolls with the matching loopy stick-on bows. Gift-givers now have their choice of hundreds of imported and domestic handmade papers, plus sheer, embroidered and wired ribbons, cording, tassels, tulle, faux and dried flowers and fruits, colored wire, beads, gilded leaves, pine cones and even fabric wraps. And these products are available no farther away than the nearest stationery and gift shop or craft and art supply store.

I wrote this column while waiting to fly home from Fairbanks, Alaska, where my wife, Georgina, and I were stranded for six days after an 11-day cruise and land tour that ended on the tragic morning of Sept. 11. This past Sunday, we were due to board another plane for a weeklong trip to Venice and Istanbul, followed by a three-day visit to Disney World. Such is the life of the husband of a travel writer; a life of whirlwind adventure but also one of much personal financial planning. Because while we are traveling, we still have to pay the bills and stay on top of our finances.

I am the queen of paperwork. You need something signed? Filled out? Copied, paid, filed or mailed? I'm the one. I'm the best. I'm there for you. Do you need important dates transferred to your calendar? Do you need your children's school papers sorted and stored by grade? I'm way ahead of you. To-do lists? I invented to-do lists. Phone trees, newsletters, address lists, rosters, agendas? Don't make me laugh. I have piles of paperwork everywhere in my house: on the table in the kitchen ("Needs immediate attention")

Albert Aley, 66, a television writer and producer whose career began as a child actor on Let's Pretend, a children's radio series, died Wednesday. He wrote and acted in Hop Harrigan, a radio serial, and wrote and produced Space Cadet, a TV series. He received an Emmy nomination for his work as a producer on the TV series, The Paper Chase, and wrote the screenplay for Walt Disney Productions' Ugly Dachshund.

Actor Timothy Bottoms won't be charged with waving a pistol at a motorist because it can't be proved the weapon was displayed in an improper manner, a prosecutor said Tuesday. ''He did have a gun, but he didn't display it in a rude, angry or threatening manner as required,'' said Deputy District Attorney Don Grant. Bottoms, 37, was booked after a motorist told the California Highway Patrol he was confronted by the actor on U.S. 101 on May 10. Bottoms made his film debut in 1971 in the movie Johnny Got His Gun, the same year he appeared in The Last Picture Show.